My Kickstarter hit its goal of $1,750 in less than 24 hours, and I couldn't be more shocked, happy, and appreciative. So thank you so much to everyone who has already donated. My friends have encouraged me to come up with a STRETCH GOAL, so I came up with a list of more technology that would help me out creatively and practically both at home and on the road at gigs: A drawing tablet for my computer so I can make animated cartoons, a new modern video camera, a Zoom H2 recorder for podcasts and live shows, a GPS for my car, a Laptop so I can get work done on the road, an iPod so I can give the one I'm currently using back to its owner, and an iPad for showing videos at my merch table (which will also help with merch sales at Table 27 at MarsCon). Factoring in fees and the production costs of the pledge prizes, I came up with a stretch goal target of $5,500. I know this seems high, but I hit $1,750 in less than a day, so it's certainly possible to hit that goal in the next 18 days.

So what is the incentive for the donors for me to hit this stretch goal? I will plan a weekend long series of fun events in the Chicago area, which I am jokingly calling “LukeSkiCon”. The central event of the weekend will be a live at least 2 hour long concert headlined by Luke Ski, and featuring other acts from the FuMP dot com and “The Dr. Demento Show”, which I will call the “FuMP Fest”. If there is decent enough internet at the location of the show, we will webcast the live concert (hopefully both audio & video) so the donors who couldn't make it can watch / listen to the show as it happens. We'll also record the show and make it available to donors who miss the live webcast. So even donating as little as $1 will get you access to the recording of the concert. So why wouldn't you?

Other potential ideas for activities I've come up while brainstorming about “LukeSkiCon” are as follows:

There's so much cool, fun stuff to be done in the Chicagoland area, we'll take suggestions and figure out an itinerary full of stuff people want to do that's as affordable as possible. We can also arrange for all our out of town participants to stay at the same hotel, so it'll be even more convention-like.

So to recap, if I hit my STRETCH GOAL of $5,500, I will plan a “LukeSkiCon” weekend featuring the “FuMP Fest” concert in the Chicago area for all the donors who are able to make it. For the donors that aren't able to make it, I will do a live webcast of the concert, and make the concert recording available to all the donors.

So please donate if you can, and please tell your friends online about it. This Kickstarter ends at Noon on May 19th, let's see if we can make LukeSkiCon happen again! Thanks again so much to everyone who donated, and I will talk to you all again soon. :)